Allison Horst
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allisonhorst.bsky.social
Allison Horst
@allisonhorst.bsky.social
5.5K followers 480 following 45 posts
DevRel @observablehq.com, previously teaching faculty (Environmental Data Science) at UC Santa Barbara. PhD, Environmental Science and Management. Data science | R | data visualization | education | art | www.allisonhorst.com
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allisonhorst.bsky.social
Happy first day of December! Hope you're skating through your R CMD checks 🤍❄️⛸️
A cute round monster, smiling while skating on a frozen pond in a winter snowscape with frosty pine trees. The skate tracks reveal what developers hope for in package checks: "0 warnings, 0 errors, 0 notes."
December 1, 2024 at 4:48 PM
allisonhorst.bsky.social
also holidays
Cartoon split screen, on the left a demoralized zombified data scientist fails to write code at 5pm Friday, needing a serious break. On the right, they've woken up and look totally refreshed and happy at 6am on Saturday, the scene now looking delightful.
November 29, 2024 at 3:33 PM
allisonhorst.bsky.social
Grateful for all you #dataviz & #databs turkeys.
A cartoon turkey looks on in frustration at a sunburst chart, drawn and colored to look like a flared turkey tail.
November 28, 2024 at 7:20 PM
allisonhorst.bsky.social
A quick bag of tortilla chips.
Digital sketch of a bag of Mission tortilla chips.
November 27, 2024 at 6:15 PM
allisonhorst.bsky.social
Cartoon monsters dressed as characters from "It." Pennywise holds balloons, one with the Microsoft Teams logo on it, while peering out from a storm drain while another little monster in a raincoat looks on.
November 20, 2024 at 4:09 PM
allisonhorst.bsky.social
Apricot mallow quick sketch
November 11, 2024 at 11:48 PM
allisonhorst.bsky.social
Blank version:
October 31, 2024 at 2:35 PM
allisonhorst.bsky.social
👻 Here's the ✨ new 2024 art, feat. community responses to the question "What's something in R that feels tempting, but is actually dangerous?"

I couldn't fit them all, so I've added a blank version 👇🧵 so you can make your own (could be a fun class activity 😉)

Happy Halloween, #rstats world! 🤡🎈
An illustration recreating the It movie poster, where a monster version of Pennywise peers out of a storm drain holding red balloons and hex stickers, enticing a little monster in a yellow raincoat who looks on. On the balloons are written different things to be cautious about in R / stats. On the raincoat are different hex stickers (for janitor, naniar, usethis, dplyr, renv...).
October 31, 2024 at 2:35 PM
allisonhorst.bsky.social
Little R horror monsters (2022). New R community inspired Halloween 2024 illustration coming up tomorrow 🎃🎈
Small fuzzy R monsters in costume as famous villains from horror movies. Left to right: Chucky (wearing a wig, rainbow shirt and overalls, with stitches on its face), the girl from The Ring (black long hair over face), Hannibal Lecter (masked with bars in front of mouth), and Jason (iconic hockey mask). On the wall behind them are different menacing tools (butcher knives, saws, scythe) with scary things on them, e.g. "Can't automatically merge," "screenshot error message," "no such file or directory", "$ operator is invalid for atomic vectors."
October 30, 2024 at 11:29 PM
allisonhorst.bsky.social
The responses are so good, & I learned quite a few new things! Thanks everybody, keep 'em coming -- the thread feels like the start of a fun blog post.

👻🎀👾🎀👾👻

Here's one that wasn't specifically made for Halloween but feels like the right vibes, from early 2021.
Two smiling green monsters in matching blue dresses (like the scary twins in The Shining), standing in a hallway with hex wallpaper. Behind them is spraypaint-style text reading "come play with us" with "forevR" in a hex logo behind them.
October 30, 2024 at 2:38 PM
allisonhorst.bsky.social
I'm working on my 2024 Halloween R monsters illustration and #rstats folks, I need your help 👻🎃 What's something in data science, R, statistics, etc. that feels tempting but is very, very dangerous?

In the meantime I'll be sharing some Halloween R art from previous years 🕷️🧟☠️

The first (2019?):
Two fuzzy monsters, one dressed as David Bowie and one as a witch, run screaming out of a haunted forest with spooky trees and red eyes watching them. On the tree branches are things like "setwd", fatal error, merge conflict, aborted R session, no metadata, etc.
October 29, 2024 at 2:15 PM
allisonhorst.bsky.social
I absolutely loved working on this cover art w/ @statsteph.bsky.social, @ivelasq3.bsky.social, & Rebecca Powell! Fantasy maps + data? What a dream.

Learn how to do tidy survey analysis in R 👇

🌟 Free online: tidy-survey-r.github.io/tidy-survey-...

📖 Preorder: www.routledge.com/Exploring-Co...
Cover of a book titled "Exploring Complex Survey Data Analysis Using R" by Stephanie Zimmer, Rebecca Powell, and Isabella Velásquez. Illustration is in the style of a fantasy map, but with data represented throughout the landscape. For example, mountain ridgelines are line charts, buildings create a bar chart, a farmer's fields make up a contingency table, light lightposts are lollipop charts, etc.
October 29, 2024 at 1:54 PM
allisonhorst.bsky.social
Aww amazing! This was a really fun illustration to make with Angie and Alena, so many fun conversations about what to include 🧙‍♀️🧹 (...while channeling our inner data science witches, of course)
Three women wearing matching witch hats and fingerless gloves while on a virtual call, each with a creepy looking moonlit sky behind them.
October 29, 2024 at 2:05 AM
allisonhorst.bsky.social
Got a special delivery of bRew together stickers (and sweet moose card!) from Angie Reed. Finding this in the mail, + reconnecting w/ so many great #rstats folks, has me feeling very optimistic 💙

If we haven't met, I'm Allison 👋 I do data science and art: allisonhorst.com

Let's bRew this thing!
A photo of a greeting card with a large bull moose amongst pine trees. Scattered over the card are a handful of hex stickers featuring little monsters, dressed up as witches, brewing data reports together.
October 28, 2024 at 10:11 PM
allisonhorst.bsky.social
Teaching intro data science or stats in environmental sciences / ecology this fall? The lterdatasampler package is now on CRAN, with curated real world datasets from the US Long Term Ecological Research program! Check it out: lter.github.io/lterdatasamp...
A hexagonal design with the words lterdatasampler at the top. Within the border are plants, animals and weather patterns representing the different datasets currently in the package.
August 23, 2023 at 1:48 PM
allisonhorst.bsky.social
New platform new profile pic, hi everybody!
Allison and her dog Teddy sitting in the grass with a mountain in the background.
July 26, 2023 at 12:27 AM